The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Started to Write a Long Post About This

Posted on | March 2, 2012 | 14 Comments

Sometimes you get to the 800-word mark and say to yourself, “Too much.” Instead, I’ll just link to Dan Collins’s post on the background of the falling-out between Andrew Breitbart and Glenn Beck.

UPDATE: Likewise, I’ll just link this article from The Hill about the falling-out between Mark Meckler and the Tea Party Patriots.

UPDATE II: Finally, I’m linking last week’s item from CNS News about Al Regnery’s depature as publisher of The American Spectator.

You can probably discern the common thread here without too much prompting from me. Civilized adults have disagreements which are settled without resort to fistfights or gunfire.

We should probably be happy for that, even if a bit of old-fashioned violence might do something to remedy the ill feelings that often linger as a result of such disputes. I hate it when my friends get into arguments, because I feel as if I must either choose sides or else try to mediate the fight.

Most of the time, I just ignore these feuds and hope they will blow over without any damage to me. But sometimes I become aware that conflicts like this cannot be safely ignored. Festering resentments among friends will occasionally lead to one of those situations where I unwittingly become targeted as an “enemy,” simply because I’ve befriended someone who has pissed off people in a dispute I wasn’t even aware of.

Minding your own business isn’t always easy, or safe.

UPDATE III: A typo has been corrected. Breitbart never had a falling-out with Jeff Beck, but wouldn’t it be awesome if he had?

Category: American Spectator, Andrew Breitbart, Glenn Beck, Tea Party

ObamaCare Was Never Other Than A Wrecking Ball

Posted on | March 2, 2012 | 6 Comments

by Smitty

One of the mistakes we frequently make with the Left is to give them the benefit of the doubt. To consider that they argue in good faith. ObamaCare was never intended to build anything useful. Which is why a diabolically evil person like Kathleen Sebelius can offer an economically nonsensical argument about paying for programs through cratering the tax base.

Americans United for Life has mis-underestimated the nature of the evil we face:
There is no point to ObamaCare other than to wipe out any functional remnant of American healthcare, and pave the way for single payer, which is, of course, antithetical to liberty.

This is why Obama probably doesn’t care about the results of the oral arguments at the SCOTUS this month. Crash it now, crash it later; the rotational velocity of the death spiral is merely a detail.

I get the feeling that we’ve under-estimated this Administration’s commitment to evil significantly. But don’t worry, conservatives: Romney’s got your six. -Foot deep final resting place prepared.

Thanks to Quinton on Twitter.

Category: Barack Obama, Health Care

Mitt Scratch Fever?

Posted on | March 2, 2012 | 9 Comments

by Smitty

Nuge:

after a long heart&soul conversation with MittRomney today I concluded this goodman will properly represent we the people & I endorsed him

This blog would like to point to a troubling item on Wikipedia:

Hearing loss
Nugent also suffers from hearing loss. A November 2005 Rolling Stone article noted Nugent, among others, has publicly acknowledged hearing problems. “The ear’s not too good, especially with background noise”, he said in a 2007 interview. “[But] that’s a small price to pay. Believe me the journey was worth it.”

The beauty of Romney as the consumate politician is that, as with Lord Dorwin (emphasis mine), the listener can hear whatever is desired:

In addition to his (possibly bogus) status as an aristocrat, Lord Dorwin possesses genuine skill as an intragalactic diplomat in his capacity of a leadership representative of the Empire during its declining years. He is responsible for negotiating the treaties that granted autonomy to Anacreon and the other three entities collectively known as the Four Kingdoms. Dorwin disputes the thesis that these territories are independent of the Empire, and his comments are taken by optimistic members of the Encyclopedia Board as proof that the Empire will protect Terminus from threats made by the neighboring Kingdom of Anacreon. However, Hardin’s analysis shows that all of his statements cancel out, meaning that he has spoken for five days without actually saying anything.

Maybe Mitt is just trying to set up a lunch date with Ann Coulter. Who knows?

via PJ Tatler

Category: Mitt Romney

Stickin’ It To The Mann Who’s Been Stickin’ It To You

Posted on | March 2, 2012 | 4 Comments

by Smitty

VA AG Ken Cuccinelli, seeking to shed a little light on the global warming hoax, sued UVA to obtain evidence about Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann’s “research”, and was accused of “harassment“.
The Virginia Supreme Court,

In a rebuke to the Attorney General, and to the writers of Virginia’s Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, the Virginia Supreme Court dismissed, “with prejudice,” the AG’s civil investigative demand against the University of Virginia.

But the truth will out. And, after all this Lefty whinging, will the Streisand Effect make Mann’s email trove all the more interesting?

Michael Mann’s emails are seeing the light of day thanks to a FOIA suit filed by the American Tradition Institute and Del. Bob Marshall at roughly the same time Cuccinelli filed his original CID. ATI won it’s case against UVA last May. Details of those documents are slowing coming forth, something Mann and the University fought tooth and nail.
It will now be up to the court of public opinion to decide whether Mann played fast or loose with his data. And in some ways, crowd-sourcing Mann’s emails — which, you will recall, the University at one time said had been erased, then admitted still existed, then went to court to keep out of public view — could lead to far more interesting discoveries than any CID could have hoped to find.

Yeah, given that level of cover-up, you figure there will be enough smoking guns in there to impress the NRA.

Alternately, Mann could be vindicated as a serious scientist of the highest ethical caliber, victimized in a warlock hunt by the Conservative Inquisition. Also, my name is Bugs Bunny, and you have actually been reading a blog called The World is My Carrot these years.

Category: Global Warming

What Do You Call a Woman Who Is So ‘Sexually Active’ That She Needs More Contraception Than She Can Afford? UPDATE: Is Sandra Fluke a Fraud?

Posted on | March 2, 2012 | 101 Comments

Apparently, the old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon word “slut” won’t do:

Speaker John Boehner on Friday denounced radio host Rush Limbaugh’s “slut” remarks aimed at Georgetown University student Sandra Fluke, but the Ohio Republican also jabbed at Democrats who have been fundraising off the fracas.
“The speaker obviously believes the use of those words was inappropriate, as is trying to raise money off the situation,” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said in an e-mail Friday morning.

In a predictable MMFA-led tactic, the Left has gone after Limbaugh’s advertisers. Limbaugh is amazed by the ridiculous uproar:

What has happened to our country where law students have to buy their own contraceptives? What has happened to us, folks? What have we done with our hearts? How did we become so cruel?
How did we become so heartless? Require each other to pay for the contraceptives of the women law students at Georgetown? Sandra Fluke reported to Pelosi: “It costs a female student $3,000 to have protected sex over the course of her three-year stint in law school, according to her calculations. ‘Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school,’ Fluke told the hearing. …” That’s a thousand dollars a year of sex — and, she wants us to pay for it. Now, what does that make her? She wants us to buy her sex. She wants us to pay for her sex, and she went to a congressional committee to close the sale.

Michelle Malkin writes:

The language Rush used is completely unacceptable…except when it’s used against the likes of Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, myself, and every other prominent female conservative in public life, of course.

Let us be clear: Words have meanings. To call a woman a “slut” is to say that she is promiscuous — easy, a pushover, loose, “Runaround Sue” — whatever synonym you choose.

The pejorative intent of the word “slut” or any other such term is to express a disapproval of vice, because virtue loses some of its prestige if vice goes uncondemned. We praise and encourage honesty by our condemnation of liars, just as a high regard for courage requires us to scorn cowardice.

We cannot esteem loyalty without also denouncing two-faced backstabbing crapweasels. But why bring John McCain into this?

If we remove “slut” from our discourse, we thereby discard half the reward of chastity, namely the superiority of prestige that the virtuous woman should rightly enjoy in comparison to those who are less virtuous. And, I must hasten to add, we also degrade our discourse if we misuse “slut” as an ugly synonym for “woman I don’t like,” as the Left uses the word against conservative women who have never done anything to deserve a reputation for promiscuity.

The degradation of language is one of the weapons of totalitarianism. During the 1930s, epithets like “saboteur” and “parasite” were used by Stalin and his henchmen to vilify people in the Soviet Union whose only real crime was to have been suspected of posing a threat to Stalin’s supremacy. Nowadays, labels like “racist” and “homophobe” are applied with similar purpose by the Left in America, and this degradation of language in the age of Political Correctness (a phenomenon also known as Cultural Marxism) ought to alarm us, as a warning signal of an encroaching totalitarian ethos in our society.

The Left has substituted the clinical-sounding term “sexually active” for more value-laden terms used to describe promiscuity, because the Left is actively seeking to destroy the system of traditional moral values that condemns sex outside marriage. And while pretending that they have no such intent, the Democrats are exploiting the phony “War on Contraception” meme they’ve created for purely partisan political purposes.

We can laugh at the hysteria — “Republicans are coming to steal your ladyparts!” — but we cannot ignore the fact that the Left is engaged in a Culture War offensive with potentially serious consequences.

UPDATE: Jammie Wearing Fool finds evidence that Sandra Fluke, who was presented as a 23-year-old “coed,” is in fact 30 years old. She is an experienced left-wing activist, past president of “Law Students for Reproductive Justice” (!!!) and evidently enrolled at Georgetown University Law School with the specific purpose of challenging the Catholic university’s policy of denying insurance coverage for contraception.

So apparently, this was all a phony political stunt. It’s a good thing Sandra Fluke didn’t dress up like a hooker and use a hidden camera, or she might have been denounced by Rolling Stone.

UPDATE II: It is important to keep in mind that this controversy involves a genuine public policy dispute, namely the attempt by Democrats to use ObamaCare to impose universal, mandatory, no-deductible, no-co-pay contraceptive coverage on private insurers — and to demonize any opponent as a misogynistic theocrat who would ban contraception. We must keep this in mind, I say, as headlines indicate that “SlutGate” is rapidly becoming an idiotic media carnival sideshow:

Obama in personal phone call to Sandra Fluke:
Your parents should be proud
— Hot Air

Carly Fiorina: Limbaugh ‘insulting’
— Politico

Second Advertiser Pulls Out From Limbaugh 
— Think Progress

The purpose of the carnival sideshow is to distract you from what is really at issue, by focusing your attention on scapegoats and  inflammatory appeals to emotional triggers.

Category: Contraceptive Culture, Rush Limbaugh, Sex

Dear Lord . . .

Posted on | March 2, 2012 | 26 Comments

. . . please hear my sincere prayer: However badly I screw up, whoever I may offend, whatever public act of idiocy I may ever commit, please — O, merciful God! — never let me be guilty of such foolishness as to deserve the kind of mockery Ace of Spades laid down on David Frum.

Amen.

Category: Ace of Spades, Andrew Breitbart

LIVE AT FIVE – 03.02.12

Posted on | March 2, 2012 | 4 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
ANDREW BREITBART DIES AT 43

Andrew Breitbart, 1969-2012

Former liberal child of privilege revolutionized conservatism on the Internet

Supreme Leader Urges High Turnout In Iran
To quote Kate McMillan, “You’re supposed to pray for an asteroid, not pick a favourite!”

David Cameron Says “Criminal” Assad Regime Must Be Held To Account
Russia, PRC back demand for humanitarian access to Baba Amr, now in government hands



POLITICS
Senate Democrats Defeat Blunt Amendment

Senator Bob Casey, D-PA

Casey, Manchin, Nelson break ranks, join Republicans in failed attempt to defeat contraception mandate

O’Malley Signs Gay Marriage Bill

Obama Campaigns In New Hampshire On Federal Dime

Santorum Skewers Romney On First Reaction To Blunt Amendment

Sandra Fluke Whines About Limbaugh’s Slam

Koch Brothers File Suit Over Cato Institute Ownership

Obama Calls For End To Oil & Gas Subsidies

Romney Touts Energy Policy In North Dakota

Protester Heckles Obama On Iran At NYC Fundraiser

Scott Brown Jumps To 10-Point Lead Over Liz Warren



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Oil Slips On Firmer Dollar; Still Up 9.8% From Start Of Year
Gold, Silver Retreat From Overnight Gains
Ford Sales Up 14% In February
Bank Fees Paying Off – For Credit Unions
Officials Rule No Payout Due On Greek Credit Swaps
Treasuries Fall On Fed’s Improved Economic Outlook
Many Cities Lose Out In Southwest/AirTran Merger
Kodak Sells Online Photo Business To Shutterfly
AT&T Ends All-You-Can-Eat Data
Initial Reactions To Windows 8 Positive
Zynga Platform Could Be Game Changer
Assassin’s Creed III Sets Next Chapter During American Revolution
Archos’ 7″ ChildPad Tablet Sports Android ICS For $129
Japanese Researchers Develop “Speech Jamming” Gun



SPORTS
Thunder Rally To Beat Magic, 105-102

Kevin Durant splits Magic defenders

Durant scores 38 to lead Oklahoma City’s second-half charge

Knicks’ TV Ratings Dip As Linsanity Cools

James & Wade Lead Heat In Rout Of Trailblazers

#22 Seminoles Avert Upset, As #24 Virginia Blows Lead

Yankees Not Enthusiastic About Expanded Playoffs, And Neither Are Braves

Bruins Ride Krejci’s Hat Trick To OT Win Over Devils

Kane, Jets Crush Panthers 7-0


Jerry Jones Thinks Tony Romo Is Better Than Andrew Luck And Robert Griffin III

Tearful Varitek Bids Goodbye To Red Sox

Less Weight, More Expectations For Nationals’ SS Desmond



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Demi Moore Out Of Rehab, On Vacation

Demi Moore

Off to an “undisclosed location”

Justin Bieber Gets A Fisker Karma For His 18th Birthday

Swift & Tebow: Just Friends After All?

Kate Beckinsale: “I Flunked At Adolescence”

“Castle” Stages “Firefly” Reunion


Girls’ Day Out: The Queen & Duchesses Make Official Visit To Fortnum & Mason’s

Christina Hendricks – Dressed To Kill…And Thrill!

Britney Settles Harassment Suit With Former Bodyguard

Janet Jackson Officially Declines “X Factor” Gig



FOREIGNERS
Frenchman Sues Over Google Views Urination Photo
U.S. Pays $5 Million To Buy Freedom For NGO Workers Held By Egypt
EU Leaders Hand Van Rompuy Second Term As President
House Armed Services Chairman Wants Contractors, Afghans Barred From Guarding U.S. Bases
EU Grants Serbia Candidate Status
Putin Rides Out Protests On Strong Economy
Norks Threaten ROK With “Merciless Sacred War”
Venezuela’s Chavez Claims Fast Recovery From Surgery
Aussie PM Gillard Axes Rudd Supporter From Ministry



BLOGS & STUFF
Matt Welch: Farewell To A Friend
Conservative Hideout 2.0: Liberals Celebrate Breitbart’s Death
Ace Of Spades: That About Wraps It Up For David Frum
Michelle Malkin: DEVASTATING – Andrew Breitbart, RIP
Don Surber: [Fluke] Not A Slut, Just Stupid
Rush Limbaugh: Butt Sisters Safe From Newt And Rick
Wizbang: Sheriff Arpaio Says “Probable Cause” Obama’s Birth Certificate A Fake
James Pethokoukis: The Economic Case Against Obamanomics In 13 Charts
WyBlog: Steven Chu Confirms Obama’s Plan For Trickle-Up Poverty
An Ex-Con’s View: Confessions Of A Con Man Part II


SOTD: Troglodyte

Category: Live at Five

Breitbart: Who He Was, How He Was

Posted on | March 1, 2012 | 38 Comments

Aleister at American Glob shares a memory of being an unknown blogger in fall 2008 when he learned that Andrew Breitbart was launching Big Hollywood:

Without expecting much, I emailed him. All I said was that I heard about Big Hollywood and I liked his idea. How can I help?
Less than ten minutes later, he wrote back.
“Thanks for writing. Here’s my cell number… call me.”
You have to understand, as a blogger I email other bloggers and media people all the time. I never get a response like that so quickly. I was a little stunned but once I had a chance to gather my thoughts I called him and he answered.
We talked about his background and mine, what he was trying to do and the people he had already recruited to help him. I remember thinking at the time – I can’t believe I’m talking to Andrew Breitbart.
A short time later I was contributing material to a nationally recognized blog. I’ll never forget my gratitude for being allowed to be part of something so special.

“I can’t believe I’m talking to Andrew Breitbart.”

That story captures the essence of what was so amazing about Breitbart: He was always open to everybody. How many hundreds — perhaps thousands — of people had his personal cell-phone number? He would talk to anybody. Merely by talking to them, and more importantly, by listening to them, he would make them feel important, make them believe that there was real value to whatever it was they were doing for the cause.

A few months ago, I’d called or texted Breitbart about something and left my cell-phone in the kitchen, plugged in to re-charge, while I worked in my home office. So the phone rang and my son Jefferson answered, then brought the phone to me. Andrew and I talked a while and, after I’d hung up the phone, Jefferson said: “Wow, Dad, you know Andrew Breitbart?”

A lot of people knew Andrew Breitbart. He loved to meet people, to hang out and socialize. Among those whom you could call “celebrities” in the conservative movement, he was the most accessible person I knew, no matter how famous he became.

I first met him at CPAC 2007, shortly after he’d launched Breitbart.com, when he was still known mainly to news junkies, as Matt Drudge’s longtime right-hand man and the guy who had helped Arianna Huffington launch HuffPo. And a few months later, I interviewed him while he was in D.C. for a Reason magazine event:

“The idea that I could do for a living that which I would do in my free time, for free, is the single greatest thing on the planet,” he says.
“I realize that my entire brain was meant to be connected to the Internet — it is my Ritalin. I don’t feel that I have a disease now. I really don’t. I’m like, ‘Oh, finally the device has been invented.’ That’s why I call it a panacea. The Internet is the greatest single invention, to me, ever.”

You can read the rest of that. Breitbart was a visionary — inimitable and arguably irreplaceable. Michelle Malkin says, “If he were here, he’d be retweeting all the insane tweets from the Left rejoicing over his death.”

Of course, he would. He was fearless like that, and took an ironic pleasure in being hated by the Left. He was extraordinarily generous with his time, and lent his support to many good causes.

Andrew had agreed to be a board member of the National Bloggers Club, whose co-founder Ali Akbar is now organizing a Saturday night memorial in Breitbart’s honor in D.C. Just send Ali a Twitter message if you’re interested in attending.

So many people like Aleister had the same experience: “I can’t believe I’m talking to Andrew Breitbart.”

And now they all have the same painful feeling: “I can’t believe I’ll never talk to Andrew Breitbart again.”

UPDATE: Details on the Breitbart memorial in D.C.:

Saturday, 7:30pm until 10:30pm

722 12th ST NW Suite 400 Washington? DC 20005

All friends are invited to attend and honor Andrew’s accomplishments in journalism. We expect several members of Congress, bloggers, and journalists who knew Andrew as a visionary and a warrior for the conservative movement.
ATR is graciously hosting this event.

UPDATE II: This is typical Breitbart: A few hours before his death, he stops into a bar, finds himself debating a total stranger, and doesn’t mind at all:

“He was friendly and engaging,” Sando recalls. “I said, ‘You can’t be very happy with the slate of Republican candidates’ and he said, ‘Why would you say that?’ I said, ‘Well, they’re talking about contraception,’ and he said, ‘The conversation is being framed by the liberal media.’ I said, ‘Well, the media isn’t writing Rick Santorum’s speeches for him.’ We had a back-and-forth for awhile until we said we weren’t going to agree on some things.”
The friendly debate continued in the bar as Breitbart sipped red wine, says Sando. “We just hit it off, he was delightful. There were other people who sat down and joined the conversation.”

Notice how Breitbart responded to Sando’s provocation with an open-ended question: “Why would you say that?” A tiny glimpse at Breitbart’s brilliance — rather than go immediately on the defensive, make your antagonist explain his challenge.

Category: Andrew Breitbart
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